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NATURAL HISTORIANS' STRATAGEMS for COMMUNICATING EMPIRICISM and THEORY Annette Meyer Generational

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NATURAL HISTORIANS' STRATAGEMS for COMMUNICATING EMPIRICISM and THEORY Annette Meyer Generational HISTORY IN A TEST TUBE: NATURAL HISTORIANS’ STRATAGEMS FOR COMMUNICATING EMPIRICISM AND THEORY Annette Meyer Generational Change: Types of Scholars of the High and Late Enlightenment In historical accounts the figure of Albrecht von Haller was frequently used to distinguish the typical scholar of the high Enlightenment from that of the late Enlightenment. Although in the main treatments of the history of science Haller is firmly fixed as a Newtonian from the outset,1 in overviews of natural history he is characterised primarily as the last polymath, a persistent theorist of preformation, and a remaining expo- nent of the old, classifying method. This older form of natural history by tabulation had, according to sociologist Wolf Lepenies in his seminal study of this subject, reached a highpoint of crisis with Haller and was subsequently replaced by a new form of the history of nature.2 Although Haller fits the ideal image of the polymath of the early modern period, he was thus nonetheless said to have been unable to recognise some of the forward-looking potential of modern scientific development due to the constraints of his traditional religious worldview. This view of Haller, as well as of other protagonists in the history of science, has been criticised as an anachronistic approach that overlooks the original contributions Haller made in his own time.3 Beyond this criti- cism of the teleological approach of modern history of science, which con- sidered the “scientificity” of perception, inventions and judgements to be endangered when knowledge and belief appeared to be entangled in sup- posedly improper fashion,4 it is of interest to note that Haller saw himself 1 Shirley A. Roe, ‘The Life Sciences’, in Roy Porter (ed.), The Cambridge History of Sci- ence, vol. 4: Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge 2003), 397–416: 402. 2 Wolf Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte. Wandel kultureller Selbstverständlich- keiten in den Wissenschaften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt/M. 1978), 62. 3 Richard Toellner, ‘Medizin in der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.), Wissenschaften im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Göttingen 1985), 200. 4 Bruno Latour provided the clearest account of this method of the “second Enlight- enment . of the nineteenth century”, describing it as consisting in qualification of “all earlier thought” as a prelude to modern science and, thus, as “unusable or imprecise”. See © Annette Meyer, 2013 | doi:10.1163/9789004243910_033 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access 752 annette meyer as a witness to epochal change. He reflected on the question of the future of the sciences, as well as the shift in perspectives that could result from generational change and the risks it involved. The present article attempts to explore this change in perception in the field of natural history and to illustrate it by referring to the methodologi- cal reflections of those who studied this field, beginning with Haller and his view of himself as a natural historian.5 The representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment are an appropriate counterpoint to Haller in this frame of reference, as they not only applied the concept of natural history in numer- ous ways but also did a great deal to give it a further theoretical basis. In the hands of Scottish scholars, natural history grew to become more than an encyclopaedic compilation of the empirical facts of nature described by the term historia naturalis. By contrast, natural history offered a suitable context for developing methods and for understanding newly generated knowledge—whether in cosmology, natural philosophy or anthropology— and was no longer considered as an irritation of the established world-view but as the basis of a new one. Jean Starobinski has described this method of Enlightenment philosophy as a “remedy” [remède] that was meant to cure the contradictions of the modern world.6 This difficult remedy, however, also required legitimisation of the stratagems [légitimation de l’artifice] applied as a reaction to fundamental changes in perspective and to the Bruno Latour, Wir sind nie modern gewesen. Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie (Frankfurt/M. 1998), 51. 5 Bettina Dietz has most recently called attention to the disproportion between the mass of studies in natural history produced in the eighteenth century and the small amount of sporadic scientific research done on them so far. Bettina Dietz, ‘Naturgeschichte, Epis- temologie und Material Culture. Eine Einführung’, in Ulrich Johannes Schneider (ed.), Kulturen des Wissens im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin and New York 2008), 595–587. Although Michel Foucault already designated natural history as one of the most fruitful fields with respect to the epistemological transition on the threshold of the modern age, following the pioneering study by Wolf Lepenies, a systematic synopsis of the genre is still lacking. In the Anglo-Saxon world in particular, research frequently focuses on the history of biology. See Paul Lawrence Farber, ‘Natural History’, in Alan Charles Kors (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (Oxford 2003), 124–130. As a consequence, other fields of study are not given due attention, such as cultures, customs and humankind, whose rich perspectives are pre- sented in a volume compiled by Nicholas Jardine, Jim Secord and Emma Spary (eds.), Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge 1996). The best systematic overview of the change in the concept of natural history is still Phillip R. Sloan, ‘Natural History 1670–1802’, in Robert C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London and New York 1996), 295–313. See also Phillip R. Sloan, ‘The Gaze of Natural History’, in Christopher Fox, Roy Porter and Robert Wokler (eds.), Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-Century Domains (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1995), 112–151. 6 Jean Starobinski, Le remède dans le mal. Critique et légitimation de l’artifice à l’âge des Lumières (Gallimard 1989). Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 753 uncertainty resulting from a rapidly changing world. Starobinski discov- ered such stratagems in completely new theoretical models of interpreta- tion in the Enlightenment literature, by means of which empirical material and new worldviews were communicated. Epoché as a Maxim of the Natural Historian: Haller and Hume In the context of research on Haller, it hardly needs to be mentioned that it is he who deserves credit for the dissemination of Isaac Newton’s ideas and the widespread enthusiasm about his genius, at least throughout Ger- man-speaking Europe, but also beyond. Haller and his teacher, Herman Boerhaave, shared the opinion that new findings in natural philosophy could be made only through observation and experiment, as Newton had demonstrated. From this perspective, the particular contribution of New- tonian physics was, above all, that a worldview which had been shaken in many respects had again been brought into balance: the discovery of two basic forces had restored the perfect order of creation. The image of a single, perfect divine force at work since the origin of the world had found its scientific expression in an empirically ascertainable law—the law of gravity. This restoration of the order of creation was the prerequi- site for unlocking the universal laws inherent in this order; this applied to natural philosophy as well as to natural history as its empirical data- bank. Boerhaave already determined, however, that understanding the “last metaphysical and the first physical causes” was “not necessary for the physician, nor useful or possible”. Haller underscored this view and even sharpened it with respect to his own field of research.7 Anatomy should be content with observation of phenomena and not attempt to formulate universal theories. Regarding the distinction he had discovered between the irritable and the sensible parts of the human body, he wrote: A theory, however, about why these two qualities are not present in some parts of the body but occur in other parts—such a theory, I must say, I can- not promise; for I am convinced that the source of both of these forces is hidden in the innermost construction, and that it is far too subtle to be dis- covered with the aid of the anatomical knife or the microscope. Concerning 7 This interpretation follows the groundbreaking studies by Richard Toellner, Albrecht von Haller. Über die Einheit im Denken des letzten Universalgelehrten (Wiesbaden 1971) and Otto Sonntag, ‘Albrecht von Haller on the Future of Science’, Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974), 313–322. Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access 754 annette meyer what cannot be discovered with the knife or the microscope, however, I have no desire to do much conjecturing; indeed, I gladly refrain from teach- ing what I do not know myself. It is pride born of ignorance to want to show others what one cannot see oneself.8 The list of similar quotes from Haller could easily be continued, reading like an echo of the preliminaries of Netwon’s Principa and providing more than obvious evidence of Haller’s understanding of science and his fas- cination with the term “force”.9 Natural phenomena could be observed and connected in terms of cause and effect—as in the case of anatomical structure and physiological
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